Assigning MSP resources with future availability to tasks

Question

I have a project with a bunch of tasks of 20 days each and each of those tasks is assigned to 1 of 4 full time resource. There are no scheduling dependencies so I am allowing Project to auto level these tasks as I allocate resources.

Projected out in this simple fashion, my project will not complete before my final deadline so I want to model the addition of new resources to the project.

When I add a resource with immediate availability it isn't an issue. Auto leveling works and, lo and behold, adding more resources completes my project earlier.

However if I try to set a resource with availability in the future (i.e., in the Resource Availability view for a new resource I have set them as 0% from "NA" to 31-Dec and then 100% available from 1-Jan to "NA"), when that resource is assigned to a task, Project changes the duration of that task to 0 days and allocates 0% of that resource to it.

In the later case I was expecting that the auto-leveling would either move the task to the first day of the resource availability or to mark them as over allocated when not available.

Am I missing something? How can I get a task assigned such that Project levels forward to the time when the resource is available?

Answer 1

In the later case I was expecting that the auto-leveling would either move the task to the first day of the resource availability or to mark them as over allocated when not available.

MS Project allows you to have resources assignments applied to a task that do not have the same period of performance of the actual task itself. Most people never actually want Project to do this, but it can happen.

Trying to mess around with the resources and define custom calendars for each resource can get well, messy. I don't recommend going this route.

In your case, what I would suggest is to create a milestone task in the schedule and give it a Start No Earlier Than constraint date of whenever your resource becomes available (In your case 1-Jan). Then just make that milestone the predecessor of the tasks that will consume that resource.